 I'm Rusty Komori, and this is Beyond the Lines on Think Tech, Hawaii. I was the head coach of the Punahou Boys Varsity Tennis Team for 22 years, and we were fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championships. My books Beyond the Lines and Beyond the Game are about leadership, character, and creating a superior culture of excellence, which is what this show is all about. My special guest today was the head coach of the Stanford Men's Tennis Team for 38 years, winning 17 national championships, and I refer to him as the John Wooden of College Tennis. He is the legendary Coach Dick Gould, and today we are going Beyond National Championships. Hey, Coach Gould, welcome to Beyond the Lines. Rusty, what a pleasure to be with you, my gosh, and I didn't win any of those championships, those are my guys. You have good players, you're all of a sudden a great coach, and I'm not very smart, but I'm smart enough never to have scheduled a Punahou. Well, you know, Coach, you know, you're someone that I've greatly admired from afar for decades, and I'm so happy to call you my new friend now. Well, it's been really, I've heard a lot about you. I had the good fortune of having one or two of your players on my teams at Stanford, wonderful young men, and they always spoke very, very highly of you, and so it's a pleasure to meet finally, and I must tell you, I really, really enjoyed reading your two books Beyond the Lines and Beyond the Game. They're both tremendous, tremendous publications. It's very inspiring to me, Rusty. Well, we'll talk about those a little bit later in the show, but I want to first ask you, Coach, about, you know, why did you first become a coach? Well, before that, how do I start tennis? I'm a farm boy from Southern California, and neither of my folks play tennis, but they're both athletic and played athletics in college. One day on one set, I was about 11 years old, you can have a tennis lesson, and I said, no, I'm not. I'm going to go downtown with white shorts and walk around with all my buddies who wear Levi's and boots, no way. And she said, well, do you want to ride your horse this summer? And I said, I'll take the lesson. I'll try one. But the guy that taught me was a guy named Harold Chafee, his daughter, Nancy Chafee Kiner, Ralph Kiner's wife, was a great player, top five in the world, and he was a very dynamic guy. He knew he didn't want to be there. But he made everything I did rusty. Everything I did was exciting. That first ball I hit, I thought I'd gone to the moon. I was so excited. And everything he did, he equated to another sport. And so you stepped into the punch, like you stepped in the hit, like Rocky Marciano steps in the punch. You step, you watch the ball like Ralph Kiner watched it come out of the pitcher's hand. And so all of a sudden it wasn't a sissy sport. I really, I couldn't wait to get back and start hitting that ball against the garage on a gravel, on a gravel driveway, by the way, was about to go all over. But then I went into it. My mom was a teacher and at Stanford, I majored in physical education, decided I was going into coaching about my junior year. And I changed my major from history to from political science to physical education. And lucky enough to land a high school job in the area after graduating, getting my master's degree and teaching potential. And then spent a local junior college opened up foothill junior college. And I spent four years there as coach. And then after those six years, as a pro to club along the way, during the weekends and in the summertime. And then the Stanford job, my coach retired, opened up and I probably would not have left the junior college foothill to go anywhere other than to Stanford. Junior college coach in those days was really a great job. And I loved it had great kids. When a wine fellow Rodney cop, really, really, really a great player is the number one or two in the country action, the 1500s, and won a state championship at foothill for me in singles. And I love coaching, I love teaching and then the rest I just stuck with it all my life. Well, coach, you know, your wife and is a longtime coach as well. You know, and you guys make such a great team. How's how's Ann doing? Thank you for asking. She's babysitting right now, a couple grandkids. But she's doing great. She she coached. Right when we started to title nine, I had the pleasure of I knew her as a student at Stanford. She was a little bit younger, younger than I, excuse me. But she grew up, she's American, but her father moved to Venezuela with a steel company when she was five years old. And much of that time was spent later on in Venezuela. And she actually represented Venezuela in junior Wimbledon. And a great group of players from this big club down there used to be an old Caribbean circuit, they called it in Caracas, the Altamira Club. And then she came straight to Stanford when she was 16, and she played in the team there. And that's how I got to know her and I hired her to help in summer camps instead of my teaching programs. And she did a great job. And all of a sudden, title nine comes about 1975 or thereabouts. And so she ended up I ended up talking her into taking the job at Stanford. And she was working as a local pro and helping me at the time teaching some of my teaching programs. And she did great there four years. She never finished out of the top two in the country. She won the national championship in her third year. And yet she didn't really, really enjoy it, Rusty. I think, you know, she likes, she's so well organized, she likes things, she likes to print it out and have it exactly the way you want it. But as a coach, you know, it doesn't happen that way. You haven't all worked out who's going to practice with whom, what time you're going to start, stop, get on everything. And one of the girls say, Oh, gosh, I'm going to be a little late today. Another one say, I don't feel well today. Another one say on my boyfriend broke up. I can't play today. And so it was like this for her. And yet, for me, and for you, you were in it long enough, you know, the thrill of it really is dealing with these kinds of things that come of a coaching. And that's life, frankly. And, but that was a little bit too much for her. So she retired from coaching and stayed as Tampa another 26 years, a total of 30 as the head instructor of all the PE classes. And she loved that. That was much more the kids were there a certain time, everyone's happy, they got out of class, they're glad to be out of there on the courts. And that was really fun for her. No, that's so interesting to hear. You know, and, and I want to talk to you about one of your former players, John McEnroe. Who? What? How do you spell that? Yeah, yeah. Well, what was your experiences like with him on your team? Well, I love John. I didn't, he went to a school, Trinity School in Texas, excuse me, in New York, a really good private school, and was a good student. He played soccer there and was a good junior player. He wasn't the best player in the country. However, I think Brian Gottfried might have been a little bit ahead of him in the rankings, but really a good player. And, and, or Larry Gottfried, excuse me. And he started playing some tournaments in the spring. In the evening in a little circuit that a guy named Bill Reardon ran in the east. And he did really well playing pass rail, ash, Stan Smith, he held his own with those guys. And so he was able, and he was on the United States national team, junior team. So he was able to qualify for the trip to Wimbledon. And he's the junior event starts a second week of the tournament. But his spring with the other adult tournaments in New York was so good that he got a wild card into the qualifying for the main draw. And that's the week before the main first week of Wimbledon. So he went through qualifying, he qualified for the main draw, and then he kept on winning. So the second week, actually the third week he was there, when the main, when the junior event started, he couldn't play because it's still the main event. And he got to the semi-finals and he had decided and I think it was April, May 1st, he had to let Stafford know he was coming. And he said he was going to come to Stafford. And then the summer and it goes on and he did really well Wimbledon getting to the semi-finals and then did well the rest of the summer played every week. And so I thought I'd never see him again. I remember he called me from the airport and in those days it was legal to pick them up and bring them to the campus. He said, Coach, I'm at the airport, where are you? I said, Mac, I thought you turned pro, I gave your scholarship away. A little silence, then we both had a big laugh out of it and then brought him down to campus. We had really a wonderful time. The first guy at Rusty, you know, everyone you treat a little differently and in college at least it's a year round sport you play all year. And so he had played so much in the spring and then all summer without missing a tournament that I gave him the fall off. And I've never done that before. And I, but I wanted him fresh at the end of the year. And it's probably the best thing I did. He looked at me like I was crazy. But I also knew in fairness that Johnny Mack wasn't a great practice player in the sense of the word that you and I as a coach probably think of. You know, you go out and you groove your strokes and you practice a certain thing over and over and over again. You use a ball machine or that would drive Mac totally crazy. And so I got out of that and then by not having him there. And then he came out in this winter and then we had matches right away. So he was a great team player, probably the greatest team player we've ever had or one of the greatest. He really cared about his teammates and was an incredible person to have as a player and a team player. No, I love hearing those insights from you. And I did hear that, you know, he was an awesome team player and coach, I want to ask you about, you know, my books about what were some things that stood out to you in it? Well, I, you know, I've read a million leadership books and, and I get sent them a lot as well. And, and I've done forwards and a lot of a lot of things for people who've written them. And, but I think in looking at your book, it just hit me both of them, hit me so well and, and really resonated with me. They were simple, they were concise, extremely well organized. Yes, you equated with tennis and that's fine, but it was nice. You equated to something in everyday life that's going on. And I think when you're coaching a sport, of course, you are frankly, you are a leader of a team. And everyone's, if you're a family, you're a leader of your family team. In some sense, the word you're a leader, if you're in the business team, of course, same thing. But the analogy between that kind of leadership and sport leadership is exactly the same. You have to set, you have to have a philosophy, you have to have a set of ideals you're striving to reach, a vision for what you want to accomplish. And you have to be able to sell your, your team that those things are important and are relevant. And you just nailed the book. I, I thought, I thought they both were exceptional. And I'm so glad to have my copy right here. It's right. I put it in my pillow at night. And it's just, it's just, it's just been, it was an incredible read for me. And I was so excited to, to read them. I read them both in a day each. Really, I couldn't put them down. Well, I feel so honored, coach, that, that you, that you like the books. And, you know, I, for me, you know, five different people have come up to me sharing that they were contemplating suicide. And then after reading the books, they, it really changed their mindset and, and, you know, their outlook in life and really gave them inspiration and hope. And for me, I never thought writing the books would actually impact people to the point of saving their lives. Well, I thought, Russi, you look at the leadership books that you read and I read, and here's how you're greatly, this one, this two, three, this four, this boom, boom, boom, boom. And, and there's no, it doesn't, it doesn't resonate. It doesn't bring his life. Green Jack Wolfe's book and he led General Electric. Well, you know, that's a great book, but it doesn't resonate because it's out there a little bit. Ironically, I'm writing one too now. It's called, I don't know what the publisher is going to call it. But right now it's called the Anatomy of a Champion in Sport, Business and Life. Very, very much like yours. And fortunately, it's pretty much done or I'd be pleasurant, I'm not crazy. But I, but it's really, it's, it's, people asked me, Russi, you know, did, did your teams have a culture or a guy asked me one time, he's an all American baseball player in UCLA and he was all up and down there and started several companies in, in Silicon Valley. And it was a great supporter and friend of mine. And one day he asked me with probably one 10 or 12 national champions said coach, how do you do this? I said, Jack, we have the best players. And he said, looked at me, he said, I know better than that. These are the best players don't always win and certainly don't win as much as you have. And your teams have. And it got me thinking I didn't, it really bothered me because I couldn't quantify why we were successful in my mind. And so this is kind of interesting. A little bit different approach than yours. And I have up 200 guys who are still alive who play for me. And I stayed in touch with them very well over the years. And I sent them a list of 20 questions. And there were things like, did we have a culture? How do we deal with ego? Did you feel, did you feel relevant? Well, if you're not starting with your relevant, did you feel a part of the team? What happened? Because I honestly could not answer these questions. And I had 165 guys respond. And these, it took a good two hours to fill out this question here of 20 questions. And then when I got the responses, I set them up into different topic areas and chapters. And then I started writing and using their quotes to introduce a topic or a chapter or to bring out something I wanted to emphasize. And I learned a lot about myself and about my coaching, good or bad. Biggest, I put in there in Capital Liturgy and Symptomic West, be candid. Don't hold anything back. And it's a fast, I think it's going to really be fascinating. I hope it's half as good as yours, half as, received half as well as yours. But it's a little different approach. It's not me as the guy telling you how to do it. It's more, and that's what I liked about your book. It was, it was based on how your kids reacted, what you did to get your kids going. But I didn't know what worked for these guys. You know, Tim, when I started coaching, Vietnam was going on. Well, I had to be a different kind of coach then when these kids were worried about Vietnam or the Rodney King problems down, the racial problems down in the watch riots. And, and, and so that was a different time. And it was 40 years. That's a long time. A lot of things happened in this world. And how did I handle those things and how did I adapt? And I never had team rules as an example. I, I soon as I put a rule out there, it was broken. And then what do I do? I'm stuck with it. And it was really interesting to read these guys answers. So I'm anxious to get this out there. I have a reader, a writer, a good friend of mine who's helping me put it in the right framework and stuff and we're changing the chapters around a little bit. But I'm excited about it. And I think I was reading of all the books I've read. I think I think yours is the best I've ever read. Oh, geez, what a, that's a huge compliment coming from you. And coach, I'm super excited and looking forward to reading your book when it comes out. And I want to ask you about Mike, Brian and Bob, Brian, known as the Brian brothers for people who, who don't know, number one in the world now, I mean, retired, but they're the greatest doubles team of all time. How was it having the Brian brothers on your team? Well, you know, it's an interesting thing. I, I never recruited, I never went to visit John Mackinac at home at his home. And he came out on a visit, but that was short and quick. The brands I visited at home, in fact, their subdivision was on some property that my dad, near a property my dad once had on his farm. And I used to ride my horse back, my horse right through where their house was. But I went to the house first of all, and their parents are very, very good players. Wayne was a great player and played number one, my first couple of years of coaching when he was at Cal Santa Barbara. And he got us once and we got him once. And Kathy was a top, world top 20 player, played at USC, really great parents and very knowledgeable and tennis and where the boys coaches all the way through. And as they go into the house, I noticed there was no TV. They didn't have a TV in the house. And there was a keyboard, there was a guitar and they raised their kids in music and in tennis. It was amazing. And really two rare kids, they were pretty much set to go to USC somewhere rather that they ended up at Stanford and two of the greatest guys ever. If you took how you would like to have your son or daughter grow up, you'd want them in the values that these two boys were taught by their parents. I give the parents so much credit of what they did. And they just, they're incredible people. They've been to Hawaii with this couple of times, the team, John Mackinac was there in 1978, that time we're both times, that time we're in Kauai with John and for the week. And it was really, so they all have a little Hawaiian blood and introduced to them by Stanford Tennis. No, I like hearing that coach. And you know, I want to ask you about what were your priorities and you know how you're in terms of, you know, building a culture of excellence for your teams? What were your top priorities in doing that? Well, you know, young coach starting out, I really felt something was lacking in Stanford Tennis as a player when I was there. And this is not a reflection on my coach. It was an extremely good coach. Did things differently in those days than we do nowadays. And I'm sure then they will do tomorrow. But a different kind of coach, he was a part-time coach. He'd get through it at three o'clock with a box of four cans in it. And first guy's there, got the balls, the new balls, the rest of us had a box of old balls. No baskets, no hoppers in the example in those days. And he would leave at five o'clock. So he was a club manager and a club pro in the area. As most coaches were in those days in college. We didn't really, we'd come out and we'd be there from three to five and that wasn't organized. We just grabbed the first guy. We'd go hit with him. Maybe play a set, play a couple of games or hit or whatever. But there was no real direction. I think, so I came in thinking that Stanford had, we could do something about that. There was something more that was missing that we could do. And I felt that with the weather we have in Northern California, not quite as good as Southern California, but close. In those days, there weren't a lot of indoor courts. So the best teams were in Texas or in Southern California, Miami, maybe Florida. But I thought we could do something in Stanford. But the attitude of Stanford athletics in that time was really, really negative one. We can't get a smart kid into school. They don't have time to be good in academics and in athletics. In fact, football team in 1960, my last year when I was going to master it was zero and 10. And we really had not had any success in sports for a period of time. Even the coaches were making excuses for this. So we had a culture in our athletic department to not lend itself to winning. And then John Ralston came in as football coach, a very, very positive guy later to be able to bend Denver Broncos. And I think my third or fourth year he took us to two Rose Bowls. And we were starting to build the tennis program with two. But you know, when you talk about goals and vision, which are the basis of culture, or lead to culture, I came in, okay, guys, we're going to, our goal is win the national championship. And the guys, the guys are sitting there in those getting sun or church rough, getting a good tan and they're looking at me. And in the book, it comes out when the guys, we looked at each other, we roll our eyes. And who is this guy is crazy. It's never going to happen here at Stanford. And I learned, I learned that as a leader, you better have a goal that the people on your team or the people you're leading, whatever kind of team it is, can relate to. And they couldn't do that. And it was really frustrating for me because I expected more of them. And in my, in my, another thing I learned at that time, Rusty, in my haste to develop a championship team, everything was important. Guys, if we win this match, then we can do this. We have to win this match, guys, or, you know, it is put too much pressure on them. And finally, some way or other, we won our first national championship in 73, seven years later. Good coach probably would have done it two years later. It took me seven years. And I thought I'd gone and died and gone to heaven and I didn't care for everyone another one. I got my ego out of the way. I proved to myself it could be done. And the funny thing was, in spite of a lot of things happening internally with the team, we wanted to get in the next year. And then we won it again and again. And I never had a goal of winning the championship after that. It was just something that just was, I'm sure, like your same own teams. Once you get that started, if you don't keep preaching about it, it just kind of keeps happening. They don't want to be the team that lets you down and lets the record go away. And so that's a powerful thing as a coach to have, not having to talk about it, just having it be a goal. And in the book, the guys say, Coach, you never set a goal. You never didn't. Sometimes I got a mac and you never even seemed to care if we won or lost. But the point is, you want to get a little better each day, right? And your book points out, well, you want to be a little better person. You want to come off that corridor wherever you are, come out of the office wherever you are. Feeling that should help somebody. Feeling that everyone is a little different, a little better the day or tomorrow that you yourself are better today than you were yesterday. And that's the beautiful part of coaching because you can always improve. And if you don't, you get passed by in a hurry. That's so true. And Coach, what did you do to take the pressure off of your guys to win? Like you said in the beginning, you were like, just we got to win. We got to win this match so this can happen. What did you end up doing to take pressure off? Well, we did a lot of fun things. The example are trips we went every year. We took a trip somewhere and we come to Hawaii. We always play a match with John Nelson's team at the University of Hawaii. What a great guy, by the way. We always play John at the University of Hawaii somewhere in Hawaii. And it was fun for the guys. And it just, we did a lot of them. We had the Playboy Mansion, Hugh Hefner's place in LA. We would probably have a team golf tournament every year. And then the guys could play golf. That was always a blast. And the hills behind stand with beautiful, beautiful trails and redwood trees and streams and always taking them on a nature hike. Which became very famous. The guys, come on, coach. Again, yep. Come on, guys. We're going tomorrow, two o'clock. Don't be late. And then the other part that brought us together, we didn't have a lot of money in our program that day. We had to raise money to make our program go. So we did a lot of fundraising events. And it's amazing to me how much the guys brought into that. And really, it got them out in front of the community. It helped us through our attendance and matches. We had to write the tennis blue when we started good. And we played indoor several times. We were 7,000 people in indoor. And it was really, really a big thing. It's so important to really, you know, take your team and do activities off the court, which really leads to, you know, team bonding, like, like you said. And, and coach, I want to ask you about greatness. How do you define greatness? Well, that's a great question, Musty. I really haven't thought too much about that. I think, I think more on a smaller scale. I think we've tried to be a little better today than we were yesterday. And everything we do are relationships with other people, relationships with friends, non-friends, relationships professionally with how we're improving ourselves. I think, I think success is more defined by improvement, as an example. And I think success can lead to greatness. But success doesn't mean winning. You've got to be really careful. We don't get the two mixed up. I think it's hard and it's easy in swimming. You know, you, you, you finish last in the race, but you better your own time. You can see your improvement. In tennis, I remember one day I practiced Chinese max four courts away and I'm pretty vocal into practice. And I hollered down, Hey, Mac, that's what I wanted at forehand. And he dropped his racket, turned around, faced me, put his hands on his hips. Coach, you cannot be serious. That ball went in the bottom of the net and it was match point. I said, John, but you got turn better. You loaded better net forehand. That's exactly what I want. And he just shook it. I said, you couldn't understand that. You know, it's a kind of thing. You look at the parts that make the hole better. And those little parts help give you more success, which doesn't mean winning, but more improvement, which can lead to things happening, which can lead to greatness. But I think greatness is more than winning. It's more how you carry yourself. And to me, someone who's really made a great mark in his world is someone who's an example to the people on how they should be living their lives, the values that they incorporated in the lives. And especially that involves in helping others. And I think we really helped your kids on our team, that they have a responsibility to help other people throughout their lives. Well said, coach. I like hearing that, that definition there. I totally agree with you. And I want to ask you, what's the best advice you ever received? Pretty good, Rusty. I'll tell you. I'm coaching football at the time and in high school. And I'm coaching the lowest level in team, the junior varsity, junior varsity. They're ninth and 10th graders. They're a little slow, maturing, not physically. And, you know, I don't think many of us automatically enjoy contact, but you can learn to appreciate it. And I played a little football in high school, not very, junior high school football, high school a little bit, but mostly basketball. And so I didn't know too much about it, but that's what I was assigned to do in addition to coaching tennis and teaching in the classroom. And we had a little one-on-one tackling drill. And Eddie Matias, I'll never forget, we run seven, say seven yards down the line at each other, the whole team standing around and the guy tackling, the tack guy being tackled and tackling him. And they run at each other and Eddie would get just before contact, he slipped and he fell to his left. Hey, come on, let's do it again. Of course, the blows, there he goes, slips and falls to the right. Come on, hey. And he gets up this time, third time, slips, falls back on his back. And he's lying there on his back looking up at the sky, the whole team's around him now, 25 guys, whatever we had. And I'm go up to him, I'm trying to be Vince Lombardi. And I go up to him and without knowing who Vince Lombardi is. And every swear word, every vile word I could say, rusty, I'm yelling, I'm screaming. And I ran out of words and I had nothing more to say. And he just keeps looking at me. And he weighs me, weighs at me, the one finger wave. And he says, FKU, Mr. Gould. And I go, ah, I just started cracking up. And the team then took the brush on, but they started cracking up. And on right there, then and there, rusty, never try to be someone you are not, be yourself, but hopefully make yourself a little better. So that person that is yourself is one who can lead by positive example to other people. That's such a great story, coach. And coach, I want to thank you for taking time in your schedule to be on the show today and really sharing your wisdom. I mean, it's such a thrill for me to have you on the show today. Well, my pleasure entirely rusty and keep up the great work. I'm so, so thankful for what you've written. It just, it's inspiring. It's going to affect a lot of people, like you say, and it has already and a lot more to come. Keep up the great work. And it's what a pleasure to be here with you. I'm coming over there now about a month. Be ready for me. Oh, I'm ready. I'm totally ready for you to come. Why I'm going there, but April 5th, I think the island opens up. That's a damn arrival. It better open up. Yeah, we'll definitely connect in person, coach. I look forward to it. Thank you so very much. And thank you for watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. For more information, please visit RustyKamori.com and my books are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I hope that coach Gould and I will inspire you to create your own superior culture of excellence and to find your greatness and help others find theirs. Aloha.